T&A

When we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), previously known as Saigon, we took a quick motorbike ride through the city to get to the “backpacker ghetto.” This was one hell of a ride. The motorbike drivers had to straddle our big backpacks between their legs, while trying to look over the top and dodge other traffic. HCMC is definitely the motorbike capital of Vietnam, and we learned later that it has an average of one motorbike per square meter. The backpacker ghetto was similar to Khao San road except with travel cafes (tourist agencies) instead of roadside stalls selling goods. Instead of stalls, the streets are filled with wandering locals trying to sell photocopied books which look identical to the real thing, and other trinkets. After orienting ourselves with the area, we took the afternoon to stroll through some of the closer markets.

The following day, we woke up early to catch a tour bus which took us to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels with a quick stop at a “Handicapped Handicrafts.” Handicapped Handicrafts was a company established to help disabled people and the poor (many of which were directly affected by the United States’ agent orange chemical spray) by providing them with job opportunities. The crafts that they were creating were absolutely stunning. They made everything from bamboo tables and serving trays to lacquered wares in-layed with mother of pearl. Unfortunately, there was no way we could manage to carry the goods with us on this leg of our trip.

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Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, is a huge city filled with motos as far as the eye can see. We arrived early afternoon from Siem Reap, so we decided to visit Cambodia’s most famous museum, Toul Sleng. This former high school was used by the Khmer Rouge as a prision which held thousands of people from 1975-1979. The majority of these prisioners were tortured and then executed at the Choeung Ek killing fields. Walking within the walls of this compound, it was hard to imagine the feeling of helplessness and fear the prisioners must have felt. The old school rooms were left as they had been transformed for prison use. Some of the rooms were divided by brick walls to create personal cells that could hardly fit a human being. Other rooms displayed scattered torture devices with accompanying pictures of the device in use. The many faces of the prisoners from their entrance photograph was overwhelming, as were the real human skulls with executional bullet holes locked behind display cases.

After a thoroughly chilling experience at this genocide museum, we decided that was enough site seeing for the day and headed back to our guesthouse.

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The reason Siem Reap is on the map is because of Angkor; an ancient city that at it’s peak servered one million people when London was a mear fifty thousand. Only the temples remain because stone was reserved for the gods.

There really isn’t too much to say about Siem Reap itself because it’s rammed full of tourists. We hired a tuk-tuk driver the first night in Siem Reap for our three day excursion to Angkor. You have to acquire some form of transport because the main temples are about 6 km away from Siem Reap, but the temples themselves are also spread apart. The first day we visited the famous Angkor Wat. It is the largest religious building in the world, and was built as a Hindu temple to honour Vishnu. Here we were promptly greeted by a swarm of young children trying to sell books, bracelets, and other trinkets.

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